A better question to ask about your campaigns

I used to sit in campaign review meetings where every discussion started the same way.

"What keywords should we be targeting?"

"What's our impression share on this keyword?"

"Why aren't we ranking for this keyword?"

Keywords, keywords, keywords.

And it always felt like we were having the wrong conversation. Like we were optimising for something one step removed from what actually mattered.

The question we were missing

One day I started asking a different question in those meetings:

"Who is this person, and what are they trying to do right now?"

Not "what keyword are they using." What are they trying to do.

It sounds like a small shift. But it changes everything about how you think about campaigns. The most effective marketing happens when you understand not just what someone searched, but what stage of their decision process they're in (Nielsen Norman Group, 2024).

Here's an example

Let's say you sell HR software. Someone searches "employee onboarding checklist template."

The keyword-first approach says: "Okay, let's target that keyword. What's the volume? Who else is bidding? Let's write an ad about our onboarding features."

The person-first approach asks: "Who is this, and what are they trying to do?"

Probably someone who just hired their first few employees and realised they don't have a process. They're not looking for software yet — they're looking for something to help them not mess this up.

If you show them an ad for HR software, you might get a click. But you probably won't get a conversion, because that's not what they need right now.

If you show them a genuinely useful onboarding checklist (with your branding on it), you've actually helped them. Now they know who you are. And when they outgrow the checklist and need real software, they'll remember you.

Same keyword. Completely different approach, depending on whether you start with the keyword or the person. This content-led approach is what inbound methodology is built on — helping first, selling later (HubSpot).

What changes when you flip the question

Ad copy gets better. Instead of cramming the keyword into a headline, you write something that actually speaks to what the person is trying to accomplish.

Landing pages make more sense. Instead of optimising for keyword density, you structure the page around the questions the person has — in the order they're likely to ask them. Google emphasises relevance to user intent over keyword matching (Google).

Budget allocation gets smarter. Instead of bidding up on high-volume keywords, you focus on the searches where someone is most likely to actually need what you offer.

Success feels different. Instead of tracking keyword rankings, you track whether you're reaching the right people at the right time. Which is what you actually care about.

The questions worth asking

Here's a checklist I use now instead of "what keywords should we target":

• Who specifically are we trying to reach?
• What are they trying to accomplish or figure out?
• What words do they use when they describe this problem to themselves?
• Where are they in their process — just exploring, or ready to act?
• What do they need to hear from us right now?
• If we show up for this search, are we actually being helpful?

None of these start with "keyword." All of them lead to better decisions.

The real shift

Keywords are an abstraction. They're a simplified way of representing something complicated — a real person, in a specific moment, trying to figure something out.

The tools we use encourage us to think in keywords. Volume, competition, rankings, impression share. All the metrics are about the keywords, not the people.

But the goal isn't to rank for keywords. The goal is to show up when someone needs what you offer, with something useful to say. Search success comes from genuinely helping searchers, not from gaming metrics (Search Engine Journal, 2024).

Start with the person. The keywords will follow.